"Faster, faster, faster til the love of speed overcomes the fear of death."

That quote, from Hunter Thompson, seems to have been the motto of the last decade. It was made into a poster for the magazine Fast Company -- itself a beacon for business at the speed of...

According to the New York Times, bankers are sulking because their reputations are in tatters and they aren't making the money they're used to. Ken Miller, a former vice chairman at Credit Suisse First Boston, said "this is a terrible way to make a living -- except for the...

Think of recessions as tests. Companies that fail them die. Companies that survive live to fight another day. But a few companies emerge stronger than ever. How do they do that? This is the second in a series of blogs about how great businesses have used hard times to strengthen...

I am so sick of the news. Every time I watch CNBC and see yet another pundit with yet another market prediction, I think of Chateau Musar -- and not just because they make me want to reach for a bottle.

In 1975, Gaston Hochar ran...

The business landscape looks like nuclear winter: Merrill Lynch, Lehmann Brothers, Bear Stearns gone. Fannie Mae, AIG, GM, Chrysler teetering. In the UK, the City has lost 40,000 jobs and Woolworth's has just cleared out its merchandise and its employees. Any prospective business student would be forgiven for a crisis...

In 1988, Muriel Siebert testified before the subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance, in the wake of the 1987 market crash. The major problem with the market, she said, was derivatives. "Program trades and index arbitrage end up bringing the volatility and rampant speculation of the futures pits to the...

When politicians really want to show us their ignorance, they pretend to be entrepreneurs. That's certainly what John McCain has done now. A $300 million prize for a "battery package" (whatever that is) that reduces the costs of an automobile by thirty percent sounds great, but really it's no more...

Lust, Caution. Michael Clayton. In the Valley of Elah. No Country for Old Men. Control. There Will Be Blood. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. All masterpieces in the new genre: the feel-bad movie. Enter feeling fine, exit in despair. People are evil. Love is dead. Altruism's a fantasy....

How is it that every article and book I read about innovation is so un-innovative? You'd think that, with a subject like that, authors would attempt a modicum of creativity themselves. But instead we get the same old chestnuts: innovations happens when there's a critical mass of unbelievably brilliant, rich...

The spectacle of Microsoft trying to buy Yahoo feels like watching two dinosaurs trying to mate: painful and irrelevant. It is revealing not in its denouement but in its genesis. That Microsoft should even consider mounting such a bid shows how that its products have failed and its strategic thinking...

Recession? What recession? Whether you're watching CNBC or just browsing through newsstands, that's what seems to be on everyone's mind. Are we in a disaster, heading for a disaster - or really pretty okay? Pundits on TV screen squack endlessly: we are going down the tubes, we are already at...

Last week, it was my turn to drive the carpool. With three nine-year-olds in the back of the car, I listened as they tore their 'girlfriends' to shreds. Miranda is just too skinny. Imogen will never learn to sing in key. And did you see that awful coat Emily was...

Do you think America is doomed?

That's the question I was asked at a speaking engagement in Iowa recently. The conference brought together legislators, educators and businesspeople from the 13 Midwest states that face a big problem: automation of agriculture, together with the offshoring of manufacturing, means a net...

Last month, Roy Spence set out to walk from northern New Hampshire, through Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York to Pennsylvania. He threw away his Blackberry and took his first break he'd had since founding GSD&M Idea City, a pioneer in purpose-based branding. Spence enjoys a dazzling reputation as one...

So Led Zeppelin has finally decided to sell the digital rights to its music. They're about the last major band to figure out that digital distribution is the shape of things to come. Now it's only The Beatles and Garth Brooks are still locked in the past.

Cutting...

Today is Wednesday. All that is special about this particular Wednesday is that my kids are on vacation -- and I'm still working. It isn't working from home that makes this feasible -- if anything, that makes it harder. But my husband has taken the day off so that I...

There are nearly ten million women-owned businesses in the US -- that's nearly half the private companies in the country. They employ more people than the Fortune 500 globally and they're creating new jobs faster than businesses...

Rupert Murdoch's idea of a good joke? Saying he'll put his infamous 'Page 3' girls into the Wall Street Journal -- but they'll all have MBAs.

Yup, that's had us business women rolling in the aisles. It's so reassuring to know that, if Murdoch gets his hands on the...

Here we go again. Another identikit takeover in which everyone willingly colludes in fantasies history tells them cannot come true. It's not a takeover, it's a merger. Right. Nothing will change. Of course not. The new owners will love and respect tradition. Sure.

Last week, an anonymous journalist at...

To some of you, that equation might be meaningless. To the more scientific among you, it's simple: it describes the store of elastic energy. And, in the scientific community, that energy -- now rage -- is about to snap.

If you wanted to...